Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v2.djvu/31

hunger drives forth at sunrise and greedy cubs implore for their udders’ milk. Of a thousand shapes of guilt I hesitate what to tell thee that befell.^[1] Bold Gorge stands over chaplet-crowned Elymus, who on high-piled cushions pants out in his sleep the rising fumes of wine, and probes in his disordered garments for a vital blow, but his ill-omened slumber flees from him at the near approach of death. Confused and half-awake he seizes his foe in his embrace, and she, as he holds her, straightway stabs through his side from behind, till the point touches her own breast. There at last the crime had ending: his head falls back, but still with quivering eyes and murmur of endearing words he seeks for Gorge, nor looses his arms from her unworthy neck. I will not now tell of the slaughter of the multitude, cruel as it was, but I will recall the woes of my own family: how I beheld thee, fair-haired Cydon, and thee, Crenaeus, with thy unshorn locks streaming o’er thy shoulders—my foster-brothers these, born of another sire—and brave Gyas, my betrothed, of whom I stood in awe, all fallen beneath the blow of bloodthirsty Myrmidone; and how his savage mother pierced Epopeus as he played among the garlands and the couches. Lycaste, her weapon flung away, is weeping over Cydimus, her brother of equal years, gazing alas! upon his doomed body, his face so like her own, the bloom upon his cheeks and that hair which she herself had decked in gold, when her cruel mother, her spouse already slain, stands over her, and threatening drives her to the deed, and thrusts the sword upon her. Like a wild beast, that under a soothing master has unlearnt its madness